Slow Surrender

by Cecilia Tan

  “You shouldn’t sit up here,” he said, a frown curving his thin brown eyebrows.

  “Why not? You’re not a taxi. I told you, I think we should get to know each other better.”

  He made a dismissive noise and pulled the car away from the curb. “If you think I’m going to tell you anything about him, you’re wrong.”

  “Did you not hear what I said? I want to get to know you better.”

  “Don’t bother,” he growled. “It’s not going to last, you know. The second you step out of line, you’ll be gone.”

  “Who says I’m going to step out of line?” Besides, James had said if I made mistakes, it was just a chance to punish me, right?

  “When he tires of you, same thing,” the driver said as we pulled to a stop at a traffic light. “As soon as he gets bored, he has no reason to keep you around.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to keep it interesting, then.”

  “I predict he’s going to fuck you right in the back of this car. You’ll see.” He gunned the engine waiting for the light to change. Then as the light turned green, the car rolled forward. “When he can’t hold back any longer, he’s going to do it, and once he blows his wad, he’ll kick you to the curb wherever we are. He’ll leave you lying on the sidewalk with his come leaking onto your thighs and forget you ever existed.”

  Stefan’s face was bright pink as he said this. I got the feeling he was supposed to be shocking me, but instead he was only succeeding in embarrassing himself.

  I folded my arms. Would James really end things when we finally had sex? “Did he tell you to say that? Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Because it’s true!”

  “That really doesn’t seem his style.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  If Mandinka hadn’t told me what she had, I might have been more worried. “How many women has he done it to?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen it,” Stefan insisted, but he seemed to be wavering.

  “If it’s a game and that’s how it ends, presumably you weren’t supposed to tell me that.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and kept my voice light.

  He didn’t answer.

  “So does that go for you, too? Will you be gone if you step out of line? How many rules did you just break, talking to me like that?”

  His knuckles went white on the steering wheel.

  “Come on, Stefan. What’s this all about? I won’t tell him if you—”

  He jerked the car to the curb and slammed on the brakes, jarring me but bringing the car to a complete stop. “You need to break it off with him. Tell him you can’t see him anymore.”

  “Why? If he’s going to dump me anyway, then why not let it run its course?”

  He cursed in a language I didn’t know and pressed his forehead against his hands, which were still gripping the steering wheel. He was hyperventilating but after a few moments seemed to gather himself. He let his hands fall to his lap and hung his head. He murmured something I couldn’t hear over the sound of the rain on the car roof.

  “What did you say?” I asked, somewhat cautiously.

  “Please don’t tell him,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Please.”

  “Tell me what this is about and I won’t tell him unless he asks me directly,” I said. “You know I can’t lie to him.”

  Stefan took a deep, steadying breath. “You know that I’m not just a driver,” he said. “Part of my job is to protect him.”

  “I know.”

  “And we think you’re dangerous. I was…I’m supposed to try to scare you away. If you went away on your own, he wouldn’t question it. Things would go back to how they were.”

  I was fairly sure James would question it. And I wondered who “we” was. Did he have other bodyguards? Other staff? Had my presence changed a lot in their lives?

  All I could say was, “I’m not dangerous. I’m just a grad student. I’m letting him set the rules, right? You guys know all about me and who I am, apparently, but I don’t have a clue who he is. How could I be the dangerous one? There are lots of rich guys in the world. It can’t be only because of the money. That’s not what you’re worried about.”

  “We all suffer when he—” He broke off, folding his lips between his teeth.

  “I apologize for saying upsetting things and trying to scare you. I’m not good at this sort of thing.”

  “He must mean a lot to you.” Was his staff trying to protect him from getting hurt? From heartbreak? If so, that was kind of endearing. “It sounds like you were trying to do what you felt was your duty,” I said. I felt a little sorry for him.

  “Thank you for understanding.” He took another breath and then looked around. “I’ll have to pretend none of this happened.”

  “So will”—I sucked in a gasp as the vibrator began to buzz without warning—“I.” My cheeks flushed instantly as I tried to sit very still.

  Stefan did not seem to notice anything was happening to me. He put us back on the road, moving easily into light avenue traffic again. “Would you rather have Chinese food, pizza, or something else?”

  “Are you eating, too?” I asked, one hand gripping the handle on the door tightly as the vibrator wound my arousal up.

  “No, just you.”

  “Then, um, let’s pull over at Ray’s and I’ll grab a slice or two,” I said. “There’s one up there.”

  He pulled to the curb and made as if to get out.

  “No, wait.” I stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “I have an idea.”

  He turned to look at me.

  “You want him to think we’re getting along? Do this. Take the phone and video me walking over there to get the pizza and coming back.”

  Stefan took the phone. “Why?”

  “Because he’s…he’s buzzing me right now. I think he’ll enjoy watching me try to do it while I’m like this.”

  “Oh.” His eyes widened as he understood what I meant. He handed me some money and took the phone. “Okay.” He tapped on the phone screen a few times until the camera came up. “Go ahead.”

  He filmed me getting gingerly out of the car, then leaned out the window to follow me getting two slices to go. I had to walk slowly, trying for a sexy saunter, but really all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and let the sensation wash over me. The speed on the vibrator kicked into a higher gear while I was trying to give my order to the man at the service window on the sidewalk. He must’ve thought I was on Ecstasy or something as I gasped and threw my head back.

  “Mmm, I really love pizza,” I said in a comical attempt to cover the true reason for my rapturous expression as he handed me the slices on a paper plate.

  He took the money with a “whatever, honey” sort of look. As he handed me my change, the vibrator suddenly quit and I sighed in both frustration and relief.

  When I returned to the car, I was flushed and horny. Stefan continued filming me as I took the first cheesy, luscious bite of the pizza and then he stopped. Between bites I told him how he could send the video. Then we got on the road again, this time headed uptown.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A hotel,” Stefan answered. “Which reminds me, I’m to tell you to go to room 324. I hope he’s pleased by the video.”

  “I have a strong feeling he will be.”

  Stefan laughed nervously. “It’s a good thing you enjoy doing such things. If he asked me to, I’m sure I would fail.”

  “He doesn’t?” I had one brief moment of wondering if the reason his staff was so loyal to him was because they’d been seduced like I was.

  “Oh no, thank God, no,” Stefan said. “He’s very demanding of me, but not for that.” His cheeks reddened visibly as he said it. That made me wonder what else Stefan did, though. He had been behind the wheel every time—could he hear anything that was going on in the back? Did he get aroused knowing what was happening? It occurred to me that based on what he said, he knew that we hadn’t had sex yet. If he took his
job protecting his employer seriously, then I had to assume he heard everything that went on in the car. If he got turned on by what he heard, did he go home and jerk off? Did he have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, for that matter?

  He pulled over on a side street in front of an unremarkable brownstone. “You should move to the backseat,” he said. “Here, I’ll get the door.”

  He came around to my side and opened both doors, just as the vibrator turned on again. He held out his hand to steady me. I slipped into the backseat with my shopping bags, trying to keep my breathing even.

  In the next block we pulled up to a small, old hotel, and two bellmen in long coats with impressive rows of gold buttons helped me from the backseat, one taking the shopping bags while the other opened the door to the lobby.

  The place may have been small, but it was opulent in an Old World way, velvet and mirrors and marble. I made my way through slowly, trying to act as if I weren’t about to come all over the rug, to the back where the elevators were. By the time I reached the third floor, the vibrator had stopped again.

  The hallway was thickly carpeted and completely silent.

  I knocked on the door of room 324.

  He opened it and the sight of him nearly took my breath away. He was barefoot, in blue jeans and a white dress shirt, untucked, half buttoned, the sleeves undone. Sounds crazy, I know, but every other time I’d seen him, he’d been in a suit jacket and tie, and seeing him like this—so casual—it made him seem more real, more flesh and blood and less a figment of my imagination. He looked edible.

  Before I could rush in and hug him or something equally foolish, he stepped back, saying, “Karina, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Reginald Martindale. He’s a curator at the Tate Britain. I thought you might join us in a discussion of art.”

  Eight: Possessing and Caressing

  I took a few steps into the room, and an older gentleman in a full suit and tie stood up from a table and shook my hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. He sounded like a butler from a BBC TV show.

  “Likewise,” I said, then turned to the man who loved surprising me. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Please have a seat and join us while we finish the wine,” he said, directing me to a chair at the table with a light, surreptitious caress along my back. Now that I was inside, I could see the room was a suite, with a sitting room and a bedroom. “I think you and Mr. Martindale have some interests in common.”

  The table was set for two, but most of what I saw was the remnants of fruit and cheese. I wondered if the wine had come in a gift basket. At the center of the table was a swooping glass sculpture, classy and expensive-looking.

  “Isn’t the Tate about to open a major exhibition of the pre-Raphaelites?” I asked as I sat down. I knew perfectly well they were, but it seemed very British to me to open the conversation with a question.

  “Oh yes, a hundred and fifty works, a major undertaking,” Martindale said. That set him off talking about how tricky it had been to assemble them all, and somehow we got from there to the relationship between the pre-Raphaelite painters and the pre-Raphaelite poets, which I didn’t know that much about. I was pleased to hear Martindale describe the pre-Raphaelites as “art punks,” though, which was one of the points I made in my thesis. They were shocking and in-your-face in the oh-so-genteel Victorian age.

  James poured the last drop of the wine into Martindale’s glass and said, “Let us not forget what a complicated time period that was to express any form of sexuality.” When he said the word sexuality, his foot slid against my ankle. He didn’t activate the vibrator, but I could feel it pressing against me as surely as if his hand had been there.

  Martindale sniffed. “People today think the Victorians didn’t have sex. In fact, they produced more words of pornography per literate adult than any other culture with printed publications. The difference is that they had many more reasons to hide it.”

  “My point exactly,” James said. “It was the expression, not the action, that was complicated. One could do a lot as long as it was not known about, not talked about. Art, on the other hand, is about making ideas visible.”

  “People look at some of these paintings now and see a pretty picture. But I agree with you wholeheartedly, Karina. The audience of the day might have been shocked. Scandalized.”

  “What do you think of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid?” I asked him.

  “Oh, it’s practically pornographic, isn’t it?”

  “Is it, Reg?” James finished his own wine, tipping back his head and showing his long, smooth neck.

  “Well, you can debate it,” Martindale said, “but I think putting her in the garments he has, Burne-Jones didn’t clothe her to appease Victorian sensibilities. He puts her in some form of underclothes. If he had done her nude, it would have merely been seen as a commentary on the Renaissance nudes. Instead, he had her in something the Victorians would have viewed as half-clothed. Not quite stockings and garters, but suggestive just the same.”

  “Especially since everyone else in the painting is completely covered,” I said. “She’s supposed to be exalted by the king at that moment, and yet you see two spectators whispering to each other as if it’s scandalous for them to be looking down on it.”

  “You grasp it exactly. Were they depicted alone, as in the Leighton version, one might be able to interpret it differently,” Martindale said.

  “I only saw it once,” my mystery man said, “so I don’t remember it with such clarity.”

  “Well, come back and visit again sometime soon,” Martindale said as he got to his feet. We both stood as well, and he shook my hand. “Miss Casper, I do look forward to reading your dissertation when you finish it. Please take my card and e-mail me.” He took a business card out of a case and handed it to me.

  “I’ll do that.” I was flattered that he was interested enough to actually give me his card. Were the Tate museums only in England? I wondered. Not that I thought there was much chance to get a job there, but Martindale could be a good person to know. I wondered if James had arranged for us to meet on purpose.

  The two men sort of clapped one another on the upper arms, and then out he went.

  James pressed his back against the door with a sigh. “I thought he’d never leave.”

  “Weren’t you the one who invited him?” I asked, standing next to my chair and wondering how to ask if part of that meeting had been for my benefit.

  “Yes, and I wanted you to have a chance to talk with him, but God, from the moment I saw you at the door, I wanted nothing more than to be alone with you.” He looked at me, tilting his head downward as if glancing over the tops of nonexistent glasses. “You ought to be more impatient than I am, shouldn’t you?”

  I pressed my knees together. “Well, I am…rather…aroused.”

  “Rather,” he echoed quietly, and stepped close, running his finger along the scoop neck of my T-shirt. His accent was more pronounced than usual. I wondered if Martindale had affected him or if he was putting on airs for fun. “I find glass to be such an exquisite material.”

  “Gorgeous, smooth, and unforgiving?” I said. I could have been describing him, perhaps, thinking about what Stefan had said.

  He raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to go on, to say more. But I kept still. With him standing this close, I could feel the heat of his body, and my heart rate soared. He was taller than I remembered. Had we ever stood face-to-face like this? Once. That night at the bar when we met.

  One of his hands rested on my hip, while the other slid under my chin, tilting my face upward.

  “Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?” he asked.

  That almost made me laugh. After all he’d done to me so far, the idea that he would ask me for permission to kiss me seemed comical. “Be my guest.”

  He made contact gently, lips parted and soft, exploring mine and my response. My breath caught as he nibbled at my mouth, his tongue darting out to moisten the way a
little and daring mine to do the same. The hand under my chin slid into my hair then, encouraging me to bend back and open my mouth to a fuller exploration. His tongue was teasing and coaxed mine into playing. My whole body seemed to melt against him, and he pulled me closer, his tongue now plundering and claiming my mouth for his own.

  I’d never been kissed like that. It left me breathless and even wetter than before.

  “What time is your safe call?” he asked.

  “Hmm, what?”

  “Call your roommate and tell her you’ll check in at eight-thirty,” he said as he nuzzled my hair. “Because you’re about to let a strange man tie you up.”

  The words sent a thrill running through me and made my voice shake. “O-okay. I’ll just text her, all right?”

  “All right. Join me in the bedroom, naked, when you’re done with that, and bring the other thing Mandinka gave you,” he said, and went through the double doors into the bedroom. I heard music begin to play softly. Violins.

  My hands were shaking so much I could barely text. It was from excitement, not fear, but the result was the same. My breathing was fast and I trembled a bit.

  I took off my clothes and left them draped over the chair where I’d been sitting. He’d said naked, so I needed to take the vibrator and the black underwear off, too. They were soaked. I left them on the table, picked up the small shopping bag, and tiptoed to the bedroom door.

  He was standing there with a coil of black rope in his hand. He was still wearing the white Oxford shirt, jeans, and no socks. His hair had grown a bit since the night we met, and I wanted to run my fingers through it. The blackout curtains were shut and the reading lights on either side of the king-sized bed lit the room softly.

  He beckoned me to come closer. “Have you ever been tied up before?”

  “Only in a game of cowboys and Indians,” I said. “Never for sex.”